NationStates Jolt Archive

I'm currently preparing for an interview tomorrow to tutor economics at university next year. In thinking about why I would be any good doing that, I've come to think just what it is that makes a tutor good.

So share your stories on teachers, tutors and people trying to explain stuff to you. What distinguished good ones from bad ones? Do you have any particular stories to share?

I'm currently preparing for an interview tomorrow to tutor economics at university next year. In thinking about why I would be any good doing that, I've come to think just what it is that makes a tutor good.

So share your stories on teachers, tutors and people trying to explain stuff to you. What distinguished good ones from bad ones? Do you have any particular stories to share?

My parents are/were teachers/professors. That basically made me a 'teacher's aide' for about 20 years. :tongue: Teaching is harder than it looks, even if good teachers make it look like nothing at all. But we're all teachers, even if we aren't all professionals. If you love the subject material and like helping people, you'll be fine. If you have experience in industry, you're especially fine. Tutoring should be a good way to know whether you have what it takes.

I was a tutor for the other students in my Computer, HTML, Typing, and Flash Classes in college. It was pathetic that people wanted to get into a technology field and couldn't use a computer or type. But I stuck it up and spent about half my class period helping other students learn things.

It was the same way in wood shop in high school.

The only time I teach is when instructing inner city kids how to kayak. The most useful tools I have are shouting really loudly, knowing more profanity than them and being able to throw a polo ball at them much harder than they can throw one back at me. These skills have served me well.

I'm not sure how useful any of these will be to an economics tutor.

I spend half of my math class as an unofficial tutor, if that counts.

Here's a few tips Neu L , ask them lots of questions about where they are at with the course and quiz them on terms (explain a lot of things two them - assume they know nothing until they prove otherwise.
Oh, and personally. Bite your tongue, don't sermonise (remember that there is no "revealed truth" in economics just different theories that may seem to fit situations better than some others. (In fact, get your students to do a research paper on different economic theorists)
Oh, and the really fun tutors often had a cask of wine'soft drinks and cheese and bickies - that tends to pack them in.
Use role-playing games to 'teach the subject" (e.g. get students to wear ideological hats and role play the different theories....laissez-faire capitalist, Keynesian, socialist, neo-liberal etc)

Guten gluck mein freund!

I thought this was going to be about The Tudor Monarch....

I thought this was going to be about The Tudor Monarch....

Yeah, I knew the Tudors. They always were a fussy family. Why, when I lived in the castle down the street from them... Etc,etc,

At my very first PE lesson in secondary school, we did swimming. One boy put up his hand and the following happened:

Boy: "Sir, I can't swim."
Teacher: *in a kind voice* "That's okay, come over here." *beckons for boy to come over to join him just by the edge of the deep end*
Boy: "What now sir?"
Teacher: *shoves boy into pool. As boy resurfaces and splashes around, gasping for air, the teacher yells* "Now you learn! The rest of you, in the pool NOW!"

Ah British private schools, such lovely places :)

Teacher: *shoves boy into pool. As boy resurfaces and splashes around, gasping for air, the teacher yells* "Now you learn! The rest of you, in the pool NOW!"

Good way to get the school sued half to death here in the US! =p

Back on the topic though, in high school I did some private algebra tutoring for a middle school student. While tutoring economics at university is a far cry from teaching some 13 year old how to solve for x, I think the big things a good tutor needs is patience (because you may end up having to explain the same thing a dozen times to a particularly slow learner,) a good sense of humor (because otherwise said explaining is going to drive you bonkers,) and a fairly strong desire to help people (because why else would you subject yourself to it?)

As a "What Not to Do"...

In my first year, one of my politics seminar tutors was entirely useless. Rather than discussing the topic. He'd keep coming out with stupid stories about stuff that happened to a friend of a friend or come up with sillyness about how he'd met minor celebrities and humourous incidents that had supposedly occurred.

I can't recall funny stories about tutoring people but I can recall one particularly bad horror sotry. One of the other students in the class had a habit of tping all his HMTL code in a single straight line on notepad. He often made mistakes it it could take hours to figure out what the hell he did wrong. No matter how many times he was told it was a bad idea, or he was asked to space it out in a normal format he's just keep typing his same straight lines.

I'm currently preparing for an interview tomorrow to tutor economics at university next year. In thinking about why I would be any good doing that, I've come to think just what it is that makes a tutor good.

So share your stories on teachers, tutors and people trying to explain stuff to you. What distinguished good ones from bad ones? Do you have any particular stories to share?

I had an English teacher who used literally throw work back at me if the margin wasn't precisely drawn one and a half inches from the side of the page. Used to constantly harp on about my shite handwriting (which never improved). Never really had a good word to say about me really. Years later I do my final second level exam, doing a margin that was whatever the fuck I gelt like on the day, with more or less the same crap handwriting, and got an A1 for my troubles. Fuck him, the baldy snobby prick (not that I'm carrying a grudge for nearly 25 years, no.....).

My art teacher would hit me occasionally if he got annoyed. (I was bad at art). We got on ok otherwise though.

The only time I teach is when instructing inner city kids how to kayak. The most useful tools I have are shouting really loudly, knowing more profanity than them and being able to throw a polo ball at them much harder than they can throw one back at me. These skills have served me well.

I'm not sure how useful any of these will be to an economics tutor.

More than you might think. *nods*

I've done a lot of tutoring... ever since about fourth grade, when I tutored second-graders with reading. I wasn't very good then, I suppose... but who the hell thinks a fourth-grader will have the patience for tutoring? I actually smacked a kid once when he wasn't paying attention.

Since then, tutoring calculus in college and LSAT since, besides teaching my own courses... I've learned a few tips.

(1) Always be prepared with multiple explanations. More importantly, be prepared to accept a student's half-assed explanation and run with it. "Yeah, kinda..." is perfectly acceptable if it gets them CLOSER to the truth... especially if you're dealing with someone (as you often will) who "just wants to pass." And students get really frustrated when you keep saying, "No, that's not really it." One of the best teachers I've ever known once described his philosophy of "lying" as a part of education: "When a little child asks what shape the Earth is, you don't say 'oblique spheroid', even though you know that's the truth. You say 'it's like a ball.' Now the child understands better than she did before, and you haven't killed her love of learning with things she can't understand or won't remember."

(2) Be confident in your knowledge, but be even more confident in your student's ability to learn. If it's your first time tutoring, don't let them know that: when they feel like you've done this a thousand times and you give them the sense that YOUR students succeed, they'll believe they've made a good choice coming to you. And sometimes (believe it or not!) that's all it takes to loosen up whatever is blocking their ability to learn. Believe in them... even when it's hard. And oh damn will it be hard sometimes...

(3) Don't just "go over problems" or explain theories. Teach study habits. Think carefully about the sorts of things your student should be doing ALL THE TIME to do better, and reinforce those behaviors.

I could go on, but I think those are the most important. Oh, right: (4) Don't do too much at once. ;-)

I'm currently preparing for an interview tomorrow to tutor economics at university next year. In thinking about why I would be any good doing that, I've come to think just what it is that makes a tutor good.

So share your stories on teachers, tutors and people trying to explain stuff to you. What distinguished good ones from bad ones? Do you have any particular stories to share?I'm tutoring an English conversation class at uni right now. Damn bastards won't converse, though...

I'm tutoring an English conversation class at uni right now. Damn bastards won't converse, though...

Why not show them this? Basil and the Germans from "Fawlty Towers" (Where the expression,"Don't mention the War" derives)
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=1k7U-_tJVmw
:D

I have a favourite tutor currently though most people don'treally like it because they can't fully understand his accent and he goes off into tangents. He is a journalist, originally from Cuba and he knows a lot about the subject. He also draws parrallels between the UK Journalism Industry and the Cuban Industry giving unique insight other tutors don't have to offer. He also knows how to have a laugh and make seminars interesting.

some of the worst teachers i've had have been at university. i had one student tutor for an econometrics class who would give you a piece of paper with questions and expect you to sit in silence like a school child while you worked through them. then he'd read out the answers and fuck off, leaving us poor students none the wizer if we got anything wrong.

be open, engaging, friendly, and above all helpful. remember that often people will hold back from asking if they don't understand something, so be patient and coax it out of them. and often when one person asks a question, many more people are thinking of asking the same thing.

also, its economics, so get a good debate going, and bring some contemporary politics into it to make it practial and relavent, and a bit fun


edit: be able to explain things multiple ways... not just the way that makes sense to you. eg explain something using words, using mathematical models, using diagrams, using real life examples, etc. what one student understands is what will confuse the hell out of another. case in point: one of my old physics teachers at school explained everything with maths first, and half the class would understand. he'd set them a test to show they understood it while he explained to the rest of us what the fuck he just said using words and examples. he'd then have a non-compulsory catch-up class on fridays where we could ask him questions to clarify stuff. mostly it would be the non-maths people who'd turn up, so it was great for us to have his full help and attention to explain things our way and slowly, step-by-step help us understand the maths we needed to know.

Being racist/sexist tends to be bad for teachers/tutors. I still remember quite a few of those myself.

Being racist/sexist tends to be bad for teachers/tutors. I still remember quite a few of those myself.

That reminds me of a tutor I had that, the first thing he said upon meeting you was Jesus was gay. Epic.:eek2: